Prosecution For Sex Ad 1st Of Kind

August 25, 1989|By Knight-Ridder Newspapers

SAN JOSE, Calif. — The alleged plot by two Virginia men to make a pornographic "snuff" film will be the first case nationwide to be prosecuted involving a sex-related computer bulletin board, officials said Wednesday.

"This is an area where we think we're on the cutting edge," said San Jose Police Chief Joseph McNamara, whose officers broke the case. "This is new technology, and police have to be aware of it."

McNamara said his department has been exploring various computer bulletin boards for some time but declined to detail any other undercover investigations involving the electronic message systems. The networks have proliferated as the cost of computers has dropped. They are directed at a variety of audiences - from gardening experts to fiction writers and, apparently, to pedophiles.

The police chief briefly demonstrated how computer bulletin boards work by typing in a series of exchanges on a computer. His queries about where he could get a used computer were answered by a police officer at another computer terminal in the department.

"It's not unlike a sting operation," McNamara said of the undercover work by his officers that led to the arrests of the Virginia men.

The investigation began when a San Jose police officer signed on to a sex-related bulletin board and was contacted the next day by one of the suspects in Virginia. That led to a six-month exchange between the men that ultimately included face-to-face meetings in Virginia, when the suspects outlined their plan to kidnap, sexually abuse, torture and then murder a young boy on film, according to an affidavit filed in the case.

"I can't think of a worse crime, and I've been in police work for 33 years," McNamara said.

One of the men arrested in the case was a volunteer companion to a young boy in the Richmond Big Brothers program, according to the director of the agency. The director added that there is no evidence that "anything inappropriate" happened between Dean Ashley Lambey and the boy.

McNamara stressed that the bulletin boards themselves and the messages sent over them are not illegal but that the alleged actions of the two suspects are. McNamara said those actions included mailing pornographic photographs of a child to the undercover officer, and making plans such as buying acid to help dispose of the body.

The bulletin boards - some of which McNamara said operate out of Silicon Valley - are used as an initial way to contact people interested in a variety of sexual experiences.